Society

[3] Human society features high degrees of cooperation, and differs in important ways from groups of chimps and bonobos, including the parental role of males,[4][5] the use of language to communicate,[3] the specialization of labor,[6] and the tendency to build "nests" (multigenerational camps, town, or cities).

[8] According to the functionalist school of thought, individuals in society work together like organs in the body to create emergent behavior, sometimes referred to as collective consciousness.

[9] 19th century sociologists Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim, for example, believed that society constitutes a separate "level" of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter.

One prominent conflict theorist is Karl Marx who conceived of society as operating on an economic "base" with a "superstructure" of government, family, religion and culture.

Marx argues that the economic base determines the superstructure, and that throughout history, societal change has been driven by conflict between laborers and those who own the means of production.

[17] The Malaysian sociologist Syed Farid al-Attas, for example, argues that Western thinkers are particularly interested in the implications of modernity, and that their analysis of non-Western cultures is therefore limited in scope.

[17] As examples of nonwestern thinkers who took a systematic approach to understanding society, al-Attas mentions Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) and José Rizal (1861–1896).

[17] Khaldun, an Arab living in the 14th century, understood society, along with the rest of the universe, as having "meaningful configuration", with its perceived randomness attributable to hidden causes.

Sedentary life, in Khaldun's view, was marked by secularization, decreased social cohesion, and increased interest in luxury.

One example of such a classification comes from sociologist Gerhard Lenski who lists: (1) hunting and gathering; (2) horticultural; (3) agricultural; and (4) industrial; as well as specialized societies (e.g., fishing or herding).

The need for mobility also limits the size of these societies, and they usually only form small groups such as bands and tribes,[24] usually with fewer than 50 people per community.

This is because pastoral groups tend to live in open areas where movement is easy, which enables political integration.

[36] Fruits and vegetables grown in garden plots, that have been cleared from the jungle or forest, provide the main source of food in a horticultural society.

Economic trade in turn leads to increased specialization, including a ruling class, as well as educators, craftspeople, merchants, and religious figures, who do not directly participate in the production of food.

[43] The landowning strata typically combine government, religious, and military institutions to justify and enforce their ownership, and support elaborate patterns of consumption, slavery, serfdom, or peonage is commonly the lot of the primary producer.

[44] Caste systems, as historically found in South Asia, are associated with agrarian societies, where lifelong agricultural routines depend upon a rigid sense of duty and discipline.

The scholar Donald Brown suggests that an emphasis in the modern West on personal liberties and freedoms was in large part a reaction to the steep and rigid stratification of agrarian societies.

[46][47] Whereas in pre-industrial societies the majority of labor takes place in primary industries focused on extracting raw materials (farming, fishing, mining, etc.

Increased productivity, as well as the stability caused by improved transportation, leads to decreased mortality and resulting population growth.

It therefore covers the effects of computers and telecommunications on the home, the workplace, schools, government, and various communities and organizations, as well as the emergence of new social forms in cyberspace.

[67] Erving Goffman used the metaphor of a theater to develop the dramaturgical lens, which argues that roles provide scripts that govern social interactions.

These shared attributes can be a common set of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area.

Ethnic identity has been closely tied to the rise of the nation state as the predominant form of political organization in the 19th and 20th centuries.

There have been many forms of government throughout human history, with various ways of allocating power, and with different levels and means of control over the population.

[82] In early history, distribution of political power was determined by the availability of fresh water, fertile soil, and temperate climate of different locations.

[85] Many countries have formed international political organizations and alliances, the largest being the United Nations with 193 member states.

[88] Trade has even been cited as a practice that gave Homo sapiens a major advantage over other hominids; evidence suggests early H. sapiens made use of long-distance trade routes to exchange goods and ideas, leading to cultural explosions and providing additional food sources when hunting was sparse.

[90] In contrast, throughout antiquity and the medieval period, some of the most influential long-distance routes carried food and luxury goods, such as the spice trade.

[98] The willingness of humans to kill other members of their species en masse through organized conflict (i.e. war) has long been the subject of debate.

[99] Another school of thought suggests that war is a relatively recent phenomenon and appeared due to changing social conditions.